


Repopulating the Species

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, Fix-It, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor discovers something which makes rebuilding the Time Lords more than a pipe dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repopulating the Species

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for...gosh, probably everything. But especially Series 6. Started out as sort of a cracky idea, kept growing and turned into part nostalgia trip, part mega fix-it, part emotional roller-coaster.
> 
> Takes place probably shortly before Day of the Doctor, but definitely before Time of the Doctor. Probably not compliant with any extended canon.
> 
> Lots of babies, but no actual sex.

River is about to blast the computer bank into oblivion as she has done every other trace of the chapter of the Silence which stole her childhood when the Doctor comes skittering around the bend. “Wait!” he cries, limbs aflutter, Clara trailing in his wake. 

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, husband?”

“We could use the information stored on that drive to repopulate the Time Lords. Think of it, River! Bringing back a lost civilization from extinction. Our civilization,” he added, excitement tinged with earnestness.

“Just the two of us?”

“No, that's the whole point! We can use any human, as long as conception takes place on the TARDIS.”

“So just the three of us?” Clara asks. 

“I can think of a few couples who might be willing to help me out.” He shifts from flip to pleading in an instant in the way that only he can. “Please, River, please. Please let something good come out of this.” She looks at her husband's hearts laid bare, sighs, and relents, rewarded by that irrepressible puppydog grin. 

***

Ian and Barbara are only too happy to oblige him; it is a few years from when he dropped them off so many faces ago, and they are just starting to get the itch for one last adventure. Clara tries very hard not to let on how familiar they look (though so young!) not only to her fractured selves, but to the original. One adventure stretches into two, and they are all a bit relieved when, ten months later, they have a son; the temptation to name a girl Susan would have been strong indeed. Ian is forty now, and Barbara nearly so, and they ask to be dropped back in 1970. “Can I do anything more for you?” the Doctor asks.

Barbara looks down at Ronald, over at Ian, up to the stars, and finally back to the strange boy looking at her from the door of his magical box. “No, Doctor, I do not think you could.”

***

Ben and Polly are a bit shaken by the offer: they had never planned to go traveling in the first place and had gotten off at the first available chance, knowing they might not get another. They ask for a week to think things over, and for the people who watched him regenerate for the first time, he can do no less. He tracks down Dodo and says his proper goodbyes, gives a Garbadian family a better-translated guidebook before they act on their mistaken belief that squirrels are the dominant form of life and humans are merely a foodstuff, and comes back to London none the worse for wear. 

“Our child,” Ben asks, “Will he, or she...change...like you did?”

“Yes, probably.”

“But will he or she be alone, like you?” Polly asks.

He sighs. “Probably for a long time, yes. Especially by your standards. But I'm trying to fix that.”

“What about the Monk?” Ben asks. “Aren't there any others?”

“Not now,” he says. “Not anymore. Not where I can reach them,” and Clara knows that the big sad eyes have worked their magic again when Ben and Polly agree.

***

“Where are you taking the Brigadier?” Benton calls after them.

“Geneva!” The Doctor calls in response. “Well, New New Geneva anyway,” he adds to Alistair and Doris once he gets the doors closed. “Happy Anniversary!”

***

Jo and Cliff Jones always figured they went to the Amazon to preserve endangered species, so Elizabeth and Alice Jones have their mother's golden curls, their father's eyes, and two healthy hearts apiece.

*** 

He wants so very badly to go back for Sarah Jane.

***

He picks up the two non-humans of their old quartet first, both because he needs more time to calibrate the process for Trion and Trakenite DNA and because he thinks he might need their help to convince Tegan. Nyssa hops aboard without a second thought. Lazar's disease took her all of four months to crack, and she was getting a bit bored. Turlough seems suspicious at first, but then he hasn't seen the Doctor regenerate. The Doctor gambles and says that he never quite trusted Turlough, either. They hold a stare for a long moment before the space ginger pulls them each in for a kiss. 

When Tegan hears the familiar blue box, she isn't sure whether to laugh, cry, or scream. Her great-granddad just croaked, she explains, and the Doctor seems to show up whenever her family members die. The Doctor turns beet red and apologizes.

“It's alright,” Tegan says solemnly. “He was 102, after all.” They share a moment of silence for her great-granddad before she continues. “So you want the four of us to start...you know...again? But trying to get pregnant this time?” He nods sheepishly. His three guests chew on this for a while. They are all older and wiser, now, even though relatively little time has passed for each of them. Turlough has become a leader of his people, Nyssa has pioneered a treatment for a wasting disease, and Tegan...well, Tegan had seen a lot before she even left the TARDIS, enough to drown out even the wonders of the universe. But the pleading look in Nyssa's eye was enough to overcome any cynicism or doubt, and she at last agreed.

“These children,” Nyssa begins, “would they be all Time Lord?” 

“No,” he says, hearing what she cannot say, “they would be part-human, part-Trion, or, yes, part-Trakenite as well.”

Nyssa nods, and hesitates. “Could they be part-Time Lord, part-Trakenite, and part-human?” she asks at last, eyes unconsciously flicking over to Tegan. The Australian takes her hand and nods, and even Turlough smiles.

“Yes,” he says, and the happy tears flow. 

He leaves them on Trion with five children, a spaceship that can make the voyage to Earth and back and anywhere else they might like to settle, and tears in their eyes, and promises to visit.

***

He finally tracks down Peri and Yrcanos, intending to give them the trip as a late honeymoon present. Peri gets him alone and indicates that Yrcanos is an abusive brute even by the standards of his sixth self. The Doctor blanches and vents him out the airlock. They go back, pick up Peri's secret lover, and he gives them the trip as an early honeymoon present; she's barely showing when she walks down the aisle.

He offers to give Glitz the Yrcanos treatment on Mel's behalf, but she seems quite taken with the fellow. He shrugs and leaves them to their business.

***

It feels strangest, somehow, to ask Martha and Mickey, perhaps because they were the two he actually visited regularly: Tea? Yes, thanks; how about a shag on my spaceship to make an alien baby? Don't want to impose, just the fate of my species in the balance.

That, perhaps, is why he does not want to ask: because he knows Martha would take that sacrifice in a string of sacrifices upon herself. He laughs awkwardly as he and River try to explain how, really, they don't have to if they don't want to. 

No, they insist, they were thinking of having another baby anyway. They hug, and cry, and the TARDIS whooshes around them.

***

“No,” Vastra tells him flatly as he lands on the cobbles in front of Paternoster Row. 

“I told you so,” Clara says, helping him to his feet. He staggers back to the TARDIS, both cheeks sore, shoulder bruised, clothes muddy. He probably deserves this, he thinks.

***

Clara is 7 and a half months pregnant when she goes to the board of governors to request leave. “You...” Ian's voice is barely a whisper. “You again.”

“Me,” she confirms. It's been barely a year for her, over forty for him. “How are Barbara and Ronald?”

“Barbara is in good health, which, at our age, is a great blessing. She seems happy in her retirement, while I can't quite seem to give this place up.” They laugh, and embrace gingerly. “Ronald looks barely a day older than you do; we've taken to calling him our grandson. It's a bit strange,” he admitted, “and it always was. But it was so, so wonderful.” He smiles and looks off into the distance. “Won't you stop by for a visit sometime?”

“Yes,” Clara decides. “I think we'd like that.”


End file.
